NewSecurityBeat

U.S. v. China: The Global Battle for Hearts, Minds, and Resources

This summer, Secretary Clinton gave a speech at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Hanoi that Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi called “in effect an attack on China.” What did Clinton say that prompted such a direct response? She called for negotiations over the rights to resource extraction in the South China Sea to be multilateral rather than bilateral:

The United States supports a collaborative diplomatic process by all claimants for resolving the various territorial disputes without coercion. We oppose the use or threat of force by any claimant. While the United States does not take sides on the competing territorial disputes over land features in the South China Sea, we believe claimants should pursue their territorial claims and accompanying rights to maritime space in accordance with the UN convention on the law of the sea.

China, which is far and away the most powerful claimant of disputed, resource-rich territory in the South China Sea, has the most to lose in any opening up of negotiations to international mediation. The United States, meanwhile, has an interest in maintaining freedom of the seas and would rather not see China run rough-shod over its smaller Southeast Asian neighbors.

Sparring over the South China Sea is not new for the United States and China — the 2001 EP-3 collision and 2009 Impeccable incidents off Hainan are cases in point — but it does illustrate what may become a more familiar fault line in U.S.-China relations: resource access.

Continued economic growth in China requires access to foreign industrial and fuel minerals. In that regard, China is not unlike the United States in having a substantial natural resource base that has proven incapable of meeting the demands of an expanding domestic economy. Mineral imports are depended upon to supply the balance of industrial demand and the security of those mineral imports is of critical geo-strategic importance to both states.

Exclusive Aid for Exclusive Access

As a result of China’s resource overshoot, the government has developed a sort of “Chinese Marshall Plan” of infrastructure development, debt-forgiveness, and aid in exchange for raw resource access, mostly in developing countries. And while China’s growth indicators may have just begun making news in the West, PRC planners have been making inroads for resource access since the 70s and 80s.

Important, say Butts and Bankus in their report, is that “China’s intent is not to compete on the open market for natural resources, but to own them and their associated infrastructure to create a secure source of supply.”

Such a focused, widespread, and long-term strategy of quid pro quo resource acquisition is destined to conflict with the more laissez-faire American approach of simply outbidding the competition on the open market. Recent developments such as the U.S. scare over rare earth metals suggest Washington has been caught off guard.

Hearts and Minds

That brings us back to the South China Sea, where American concern over China’s maneuvering for more exclusive control of resources may have played a role in Secretary Clinton’s decision to take a stand on international mediation rather than bilateral negotiations at the ASEAN summit and mount a metaphorical “attack on China.” At the same conference, the United States also announced a “hearts and minds” commitment to Southeast Asia, with a $187 million investment in the Lower Mekong Initiative.

Investment in the Lower Mekong Initiative represents a smart counter to Chinese resource diplomacy by employing American soft power to not only improve individual livelihoods but to also potentially win valuable clout as a friend to Southeast Asia in the South China Sea dispute. It may also signal that Washington is serious about responding to China’s bilateral diplomacy and development strategy and maintaining open markets.

Incentive to Clash or Cooperate?

Butts and Bankus point out what Westerners often forget: that PRC planners are just as suspicious of American intentions as Washington is of theirs. They remember well America’s Cold War strategy of encirclement and eye U.S. alliances with Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, India, and Central Asia warily. China is also just as reliant on the Middle East for oil imports as the United States, if not more so, and is therefore apprehensive about a continued American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If the natural world is to be given its due and the human world is not to go utterly mad, then we have a great deal of work ahead of us. What troubles me is the way ‘the brightest and best’; the smartest guys in the room; the ones who report they have not flown commercial since the 70s; the casino operatives who have added nothing to the human economy and marked themselves as thieves of the highest order; the relentless plunderers of Earth’s resources and reckless degraders of its environs; the greediest among us who have hoarded most of the world’s wealth but done nothing productive to obtain it; those who live long and large without regard to human limits and Earth’s limitations, engage so righteously in conscious deception as well as in willful denial of any effort to communicate about matters of concern that do not buttress their selfish interests. These self-proclaimed masters of the universe have much larger, more fashionable and ever important agendas than educating the human family, telling the truth and doing the right thing, I suppose.

Perhaps the time has come to sort out what is sacred from what is profane about the predominant culture. We need to do this one thing soon, I suppose, because what is profane about the culture is threatening to overwhelm the whatsoever else is sacred in the planetary home we inhabit. At least to me there is something perverse harbored within a culture that makes it ok for the most arrogant, clever and greedy among us to “obey the laws” and still destroy everything which is known to be sacred in the planetary home God blesses us to inhabit…and not desecrate as is plainly occurring in our time. Sad to say, the children will be justified to look back in anger and utter disbelief at the way their avaricious leading elders dishonestly and duplicitously destructed the natural world, even as they claimed so seductively, arrogantly and self-righteously not only to be protecting and preserving God’s Creation but also to be doing "God's work".

What a shame it is that a tiny minority of morally bankrupt, craven greedmongers are allowed to perpetrate a sham in the name of the human community and God which will likely turn our planetary home into a shambles!

Matt

This is crap. Whats next? China's population problem is now not only effecting how they live and their quality of life, but it is starting to bleed over into other countries that need help in non resource area. The most stunning comment in my mind is the Chinese forgiving debt to extract raw resources from developing countries. What are the security implications?

Joey Ammon

It is true that China is growing at a rapid rate, and has past Japan as the second largest economy in the world. But does the U.S. have to worry? It is interesting how China has taken an imperialistic approach to gathering resources. Going as far to invent technology great enough to explore the South China Sea and plant its nation’s flag on the seafloor like it has claimed territory. China does not bid for resources on an open market like the U.S.; instead they find it, buy it and own it. China has every right to search for resource rich areas to further them as an emerging power in the world. The United States, European countries and Japan have and are stilling using third world countries for cheap labor to make large quantities of goods. Other countries may feel like China is hoarding resources but I think it is just another strategy for collecting resources in a global economy. If china has the demand for large amount of resources then they should have the right to collect them. Recently, China has damned the Mekong River, a major source of water for Southeast Asian countries that originates in China. Unfortunately, many countries are suffering from lower water levels downstream. This is just China using their geographically rich resources to their advantage. Why would they let fresh water leave there country when they can collect it? Some countries are geographically better off with rich resources then others and that allows them to grow. The United States is no different. Should we allow other countries to just come and dig up our mass amount of coal deposit at no cost just because we have it? Why is water different? China did not become the second largest economy in the world by giving away its resources.

http://www.blogger.com/profile/10648727700659999180 Schuyler Null

For more on the chances of a resource war between China and the United States (or anyone else), I'd recommend this article. Basically it's remote. But how the relationships developing between China and its partner governments and corporations around the world will affect international politics, environmental governance, etc. remains to be seen and deserves more attention.

I've also got to disagree with Joey on the Mekong. First there's the question of whether or not water is a natural right. Coal and water are both natural resources, yes, but water is a basic human necessity. It therefore deserves special treatment and is generally afforded that on the international stage. There's also the problem of when you start treating water like a sovereign resource, you've eliminated any chance of anything but a zero-sum game, which is in no one's long-term interest. China gets the short-term gain of more water, energy, etc. but would certainly lose more in the long-run in all the lost long-term relationships – business, political, military, etc. – that would no longer be possible with its neighbors after such a bellicose move.

Anonymous

China is a huge resource eating beast, and the beast is hungry. A manufacturing based economy lives on fossil fuel, and cheap labor. China exploits it's energy needs from around the world, and exploits it's own people for cheap labor. If you protest, you get a bullet in the brain. Then, they cut your still warm organs from your body to sold to the highest bidder. China has 55 laws with death as the penalty. The are polluting the planet at will. Let's not forget who we are dealing with here.